Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Today was my second day teaching my unit on Downriver. All of my students seemed to really enjoy it, and some of them even expressed that they really liked it so far. That made me so happy. They've responded really well to the activities I have planned, too. :) I'm really pleased they've had a positive response to the novel since I decided to change it from what my cooperating teacher normally teaches at this time.

Yesterday, they did a webquest as an introduction to the novel after we completed a short grammar activity. Today, I showed them some photos of the Grand Canyon and Storm King Mountain in Colorado. Then, I showed them a video of a couple of people rafting the Lava Falls rapid on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. The raft flipped, so of course the kids loved it. I made up a character list sheet for them, so they could keep track of all the characters. I also made up a "river lingo" vocabulary sheet to help them with whitewater rafting/river terms they may not have been very familiar with. I'm SO glad I had these two resources for them, especially the character list. It was a huge help as we began reading today.